Smith-Ninth St. Station Closed ‘Til 2012

Anyone who lives or works in the vicinity of the Smith-Ninth St. station on the F/G line now lives or works in the vicinity of no train station. Long-planned station work to the elevated station means it’ll be closed to riders for three seasons, until the spring of next year, by which time the Iowa caucuses will already feel like forever ago. The stop is the nearest to Red Hook; now visitors to that already hard-to-reach neighborhood, and residents going home, will have to walk from Carroll Street, or wait at Fourth Avenue for a bus. The conductor on my Kings Highway-bound F yesterday evening said you could just walk from Fourth Avenue because it’s just “four or five short little blocks,” but they’re actually pretty long avenues. Still walkable, I guess, at least for the young and healthy.